00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Okay, so now the other bigger news here,
00:05 not the biggest state in the country,
00:06 but very popular in the Northeast.
00:08 A lot of people from Massachusetts live in Maine
00:10 or close by, people have moved up there.
00:13 Maine is expected to launch sports betting officially
00:15 on a Friday.
00:17 So let's get the very latest details on that.
00:20 - I think more so than the Florida news,
00:22 this kind of surprised me this week
00:24 'cause just last week I talked
00:25 with the Maine Gaming Control Unit,
00:28 Executive Director Milton Champion,
00:30 and he said, "We're on track to launch in November,
00:32 "but we don't have a firm date."
00:33 And then sure enough, yesterday we get a release
00:35 that says we're launching Friday.
00:37 And that's a pretty kind of astounding turnaround
00:41 from, oh, we're gonna launch in November
00:43 to we're gonna launch the first couple days of November.
00:46 And yeah, so that's,
00:48 and it comes after a very long process.
00:51 I mean, we've talked about it at length on this program,
00:54 all the delays and just the long process
00:57 that it's taken to go live in Maine.
00:59 I mean, Governor Janet Mills signed it last spring into law
01:03 and it's taken, what is that now,
01:06 a year and a half for them to get up and running.
01:08 And yeah, like you said, it's not a huge market
01:12 by any means, a pretty small one,
01:14 but it should be a fun one.
01:16 I mean, the Northeast is now pretty much full
01:19 with online sports betting,
01:21 so that people can cross borders pretty freely
01:23 and not worry about it.
01:25 In Maine on Friday, you're gonna have Caesars.
01:28 They've partnered with three of the four tribes
01:31 that provide online access to the state.
01:33 And just yesterday, kind of out of nowhere,
01:36 DraftKings announced that they partnered
01:38 with the fourth tribe.
01:39 So DraftKings will be in Maine as well,
01:40 which is kind of a shock because earlier this year,
01:44 the Sports Betting Alliance,
01:45 which represents FanDuel, Fanatics, DraftKings,
01:49 and who am I missing?
01:52 FanMGM, said they're not gonna be in Maine
01:57 because of this weird process
02:00 that they're all not gonna be able to be in,
02:02 but here we are and DraftKings will be up there.
02:05 So again, not a huge robust market,
02:08 not a ton of options for online operators,
02:10 but at least Caesars and DraftKings
02:12 provides a little bit of choice for consumers up there.
02:14 So I think people in Maine are probably really relieved,
02:18 especially after just last week,
02:20 we heard that Champion has put the clamps down
02:25 on Pick'Em Games.
02:27 So the users are probably gonna just shift
02:29 from the Pick'Em Games right on over to real sports betting.
02:32 So Mainers are probably pretty excited about it
02:35 after waiting a very long time,
02:37 even after it went into law.
02:39 (upbeat music)
02:42 [MUSIC]
Comments